at work on something new, sixty pages in, I

feel my body ease, my mind knock back the anxiety that is too much of who I naturally am. We writers can't know if our work will be of interest to one other soul. We can know if it is of interest to us. If it wakes us up in the morning, teasing: Choose me. Come near. See what happens next.

I'm a mere sixty pages into a novel for adults.

I want to see what happens next.

I realize just how much this new, strange, possibly impossible project means to me when friends ask (in our living room Friday, over an amazing dinner, last night) what I'm working on, and I feel suddenly electric in the telling.

(And glad for their forgiveness, if suddenly I talk too much.)

Added later in the day: Miss Kelly very intelligently asks why I, never a fan of labels, stuck a label into this post. Here are the facts: This new book is only partly true and so it is definitely more fiction than nonfiction. Its protagonist begins as a teen but grows into a woman, and so the book would never be bought by a publishing house focused on young adult books. I was thinking more about how this book might ultimately be published than by whom it might ultimately be read when I used the term "novel for adults." But darn, it's true, I don't like labels, and since I don't, I should probably not use them.